Questions for IronRuby's RubyInside Article

Ruby IronRuby
1

All,

RubyInside.comhttp://rubyinside.com/ will be running a series of
articles about all the various Ruby implementations, written by the
implementers, and each article is accompanied with a Q&A-style section.

IronRuby hasn’t really received any IronRuby-specific questions, so I’d
like to ask all of you to propose questions (as a reply to this mail),
which I will then answer in the article =P. These can be questions you
know the answer to, but think would provide valuable information to the
rest of the Ruby community, or questions you don’t know the answer too,
which would provide valuable information to everyone =)

For some context and/or inspiration, here’s the current IronRuby Q&A:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcvr9mmg_108c67mcf2b. Feedback or
questions on the answers are welcome.

~Jimmy

2

Hi Jimmy,

Here are some questions from the top of my head:

  1. I’m a Ruby guy who loves Windows (the horror!!!), does IronRuby have
    advantage over other implementations when it comes to developing on
    Windows?
  2. Will Ruby libraries and gems be available in IronRuby?
  3. Silverlight is rapidly growing and improving. Since it is a .NET
    technology, can you write Silverlight applications with IronRuby?
  4. Is Microsoft serious about it or will V1.0 be the first and the last
    version of IronRuby?

Hope it helps,
Shay.

Shay F. | Author of IronRuby Unleashed | .NET Technologies
Consultant
and Instructor | Sela Technology Center
Blog: http://IronShay.com | Twitter: http://twitter.com/ironshay

On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Jimmy S. <

3

I’m not sure if this is too late or not, but regarding this question:

*Q: *Closures, continuations, and tail-call optimizations are often
discussed in terms of programming language VM’s. Which of these
attributes
are implementable at present, which are expected to be implemented, and
which are not possible by design?
*
*
You might want to peek at the Reactive Extensions
Observable.Createhttp://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/rx/thread/03f4730f-fe11-4ccf-a799-025fa6e73ac2method.
This method is supposed to represent call/cc on the CLR. Several of
us are still trying to figure out exactly how, but with Rx running on
.NET,
Mono, and Silverlight, you should be covered. This is probably a 1.x
feature, but I just wanted to throw it out there.
*
*Ryan R.

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 6:58 PM, Jimmy S. <

4

No, there is currently no way how to implement continuations on CLR that
could capture stack of arbitrary managed method frames. If all frames
were under your control you could compile them in a special way that
supports continuations. That’s IMO what Rx provides. In theory we could
IL-rewrite IronRuby.Libararies into code that supports continuations and
we could generate continuations aware IL for Ruby methods. But as soon
as you have a call to an arbitrary .NET method that wasn’t compiled with
continuations support in the middle of your stack trace it breaks.

Tomas

From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ryan R.
Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 12:36 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] Questions for IronRuby’s RubyInside Article

I’m not sure if this is too late or not, but regarding this question:

Q: Closures, continuations, and tail-call optimizations are often
discussed in terms of programming language VM’s. Which of these
attributes are implementable at present, which are expected to be
implemented, and which are not possible by design?

You might want to peek at the Reactive Extensions
Observable.Createhttp://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/rx/thread/03f4730f-fe11-4ccf-a799-025fa6e73ac2
method. This method is supposed to represent call/cc on the CLR. Several
of us are still trying to figure out exactly how, but with Rx running on
.NET, Mono, and Silverlight, you should be covered. This is probably a
1.x feature, but I just wanted to throw it out there.

Ryan R.

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 6:58 PM, Jimmy S.
<[email protected]mailto:[email protected]>
wrote:
All,

RubyInside.comhttp://rubyinside.com/ will be running a series of
articles about all the various Ruby implementations, written by the
implementers, and each article is accompanied with a Q&A-style section.

IronRuby hasn’t really received any IronRuby-specific questions, so I’d
like to ask all of you to propose questions (as a reply to this mail),
which I will then answer in the article =P. These can be questions you
know the answer to, but think would provide valuable information to the
rest of the Ruby community, or questions you don’t know the answer too,
which would provide valuable information to everyone =)

For some context and/or inspiration, here’s the current IronRuby Q&A:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcvr9mmg_108c67mcf2b. Feedback or
questions on the answers are welcome.

~Jimmy

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